How to get leaked content taken down

First, the mistake almost everyone makes

Search for how to remove leaked content and you will be told to file a copyright notice. That advice assumes you own the video. Very often you do not, because the person who leaked it is the person who filmed it, and in most places whoever pressed record holds the copyright.

People spend days on a route that was never available to them, while a faster route sat one click away. So before anything else: you do not need to own the copyright to get private content about you removed. The report paths that large platforms run for non-consensual intimate content do not ask about ownership at all.

Before you send anything, get the full list

Reporting is per link. Every form asks for exact addresses, and the work is roughly the same whether you have one link or twenty, so it is worth finding all of them before you start rather than doing this five separate times over five weeks.

Searching your name only finds the copies that used your name, and renaming a file is the first thing anyone does. Matching the video itself finds the rest, including clips cut down to a few seconds and buried inside longer uploads.

Route one: the platform's own report form

Use it when: the content is on any large, mainstream platform.

Most big sites run a dedicated form for private sexual content posted without consent. It is usually separate from the general abuse form and separate from the copyright form, and it is often buried a level or two deep in the help pages. Search the site's help centre for "non-consensual" rather than for "report".

What these forms typically ask for:

• The exact links.
• Confirmation that you are the person shown.
• Confirmation that you did not agree to it being posted.
• Sometimes identity verification, which is uncomfortable but is how they avoid removing content on the say-so of strangers.

This is normally the fastest route and often the only one you need. Do it first, for every large site on your list.

Route two: a copyright notice

Use it when: you filmed it, or you otherwise own it.

A takedown notice is a formal legal request. Sites that operate in or serve the US have strong incentives to act on a valid one quickly, because ignoring it costs them a legal protection they rely on. It is powerful, but only if the video is genuinely yours to claim.

It is also the only route that scales well when there are many copies, because the notice text stays the same and only the links change. Here is how to write one, with a template.

Route three: StopNCII

Use it when: you want to stop it appearing again.

StopNCII does not remove existing pages. It creates a fingerprint of your image or video on your own device, shares only that fingerprint with participating platforms, and those platforms then block matching uploads before they go live. Your file never leaves your device.

It is the only route that works on what has not happened yet, which makes it worth doing early even though nothing visibly changes on the day you do it. How it works, and what it does not cover.

Route four: the host, when the site ignores you

Use it when: the site has no form, or has ignored you for two weeks.

Small sites often have no report path at all, or one that goes nowhere. Their hosting company and their domain registrar do have one, and they have far more to lose than the site does.

1. Look up the domain in a WHOIS service to find the registrar.
2. Look up the site's IP address to find the hosting company. Note that many sites sit behind a proxy service, which has its own abuse form and will usually forward reports to the real host.
3. Find the abuse contact each of them publishes, and send the same notice you sent the site, plus the fact that the site did not respond and when you contacted it.

Payment providers are a further step along the same line for commercial sites. That is slower and worth keeping in reserve.

Then clean up the search results

A page can be gone while the search result for it stays visible for a while. Search engines run their own removal request tools, both for pages that no longer exist and for personal content, and those requests are handled separately from the site. Do the site first, because a search engine will usually not remove a result that still points at a live page.

Keep a log

One row per copy: the link, which route you used, the date you sent it, any reference number, and the outcome. It is dull and it is the thing that makes the difference between chasing effectively and losing track after the twelfth report.

It is also exactly what you hand over if this later becomes a police matter or goes to a lawyer.